EA Interview Reveals that They Care About The Players, Not Revenue

August 25, 2017Written by Elizabeth Henges

Electronic Arts, a large and well-known game publisher, wants you to know that they care about you. MCV recently sat down with the Executive Vice President of global publishing, Laura Miele, for an interview about Battlefield 1’s new competitive mode. Miele states that this mode, and many other choices EA makes are in the pursuit of player satisfaction, and profits are secondary on the company’s mind.

Miele refers to this company shift as part of the “golden era of gaming:”

“I really see it as a golden era of gaming right now, where players are at the centre of our business strategies, our game design and our execution. Internally at EA, we now measure player sentiment and player engagement over dollars or unit sales. We really have taken a really significant shift. We had players at our studio helping us to create [Battlefield 1’s new competitive gaming mode] and that’s why I think it’s a golden era for players, because they have such a strong voice in what we are creating.”

“Players are at the centre of everything that we do,” Miele said. “To have players’ sentiment and engagement, and to have our teams rewarded for that – instead of units and revenue – has radically changed the way we think about services in games for players.”

Miele also talks about how they want to keep their games in gamers’ minds for as long as possible:

“We see our connection to our players as a solid consistent thread that we never want to break,” Miele said. “So from the moment we start telling them about a game to the moment the game comes to the market, and then has been out there for five or six years, we want to keep that thread as constant as possible, through our marketing, through our business strategy, to the game content itself.”

“We’re taking our engagement and services to a new place which I’m incredibly excited about. We have all that ahead of us and EA has an incredibly long runway still in live services. We’ve enjoyed great success in where we are, but we have so much more we’re going to accomplish. We’re just beginning our journey.”